When Sabrina Ness gets on stage, she delivers a lesson well beyond her years.

“Every one of you has a chance to make a difference in this world,” she tells her audience. “But to make this difference, you really need to know: What lights you up?”

Then she starts singing:

What lights you up? What helps you grow?

Does your life matter, do you let it show?

Wake up now, cause wouldn’t you hate,

To find tomorrow was really too late?

Sabrina is 11.

But living with cystic fibrosis, a chronic lung disease, makes you think about “the light that’s inside you … that shines from the inside out,” said Sabrina, who lives in West Lakeland Township.

Sabrina was recently granted a gift she’s dreamed about for years. The Make-A-Wish Foundation of Minnesota has arranged for Sabrina to record her own CD; she also gets to sing at the Mall of America on Friday, Dec. 14.

“I wanted to do something with music and let people hear my songs and the messages in them, to try and encourage them,” Sabrina said Wednesday. “It’s my way of leaving a mark on the world. I want people to still listen to the songs and get the messages in them after I’m gone.”

Naomi Ness, Sabrina’s mother, said her daughter has been “contemplating her wish for years.”

“She wanted to do something that would have a lasting effect,” Naomi Ness said. “This is how she views being able to make a difference: To leave something behind.”

Make-A-Wish arranged for her to work with professional musicians in a recording studio in Minneapolis. Her CD, “Revolution,” should be released in mid-January.

Sabrina will perform two songs from the album, “What Lights You Up?” and “Perfect,” on Friday. In “Perfect,” Sabrina sings about how dolls should be made imperfect to reflect children with disabilities:

So what does perfect look like? And who should Barbie be?

A story that’s untold or just another doll kids need?

There’s a deeper story, behind everyone we see,

Stories left untold that aren’t perfect, just like me.

Sabrina’s parents, Jeffrey and Naomi Ness, first realized something was wrong when Sabrina was 3-1/2 months old. Their daughter, the second of four children, couldn’t keep food down.

“She was ‘failure to thrive,’ ” said Naomi Ness, an attorney at JRW Law in Minneapolis. “She couldn’t keep anything in. She was not gaining weight. She was the size of a newborn.”

Cystic fibrosis causes sticky mucus buildup in the lungs and other organs. It can cause life-threatening respiratory problems or, as in Sabrina’s case, digestive issues. The typical life expectancy is about 37 years, according to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.

Sabrina wears a vest and breathes into a nebulizer twice a day for a half-hour at a time. The vest wraps around her chest and shakes loose mucus by rapidly compressing her lungs. She also takes about 30 pills a day; most are enzymes that aid digestion.

“I can keep up with normal kids,” she said. “I have to do my vest and nebs, but it hasn’t gotten to the point where I can’t do things that other kids can. I can do practically anything that other kids can. It’s just, sometimes, it’s harder to breathe.”

Sabrina has never let her cystic fibrosis define her.

She started singing when she was 2 years old. By the time she was 6, she was singing at the Cystic Fibrosis Breath of Life Gala. She started taking voice lessons when she was 8 and sang at the Make-A-Wish Ball in 2011.

A sixth-grader at Andersen Elementary School in Bayport, she said she dreams of being a famous singer like Taylor Swift.

“I’ll try my best to get everything done that I want to get done,” she said.

Naomi Ness said her daughter doesn’t get stressed out by performing in front of large crowds.

“Preparation? She just kind of wings it,” she said. “It’s her personality to not stress or worry about a lot. Her glass is always half full. She enjoys performing, and I think that really shows when she performs. She works hard. She consistently works hard up until the performance. She sings all day long, every day.”

In August, Sabrina was named a semifinalist in the Minnesota State Fair Amateur Talent Show’s pre-teen division. She sang “What Lights You Up?”

Sabrina Ness, 11, of West Lakeland Township will perform at 1 p.m. Friday, Dec. 14, on the second floor of Macy’s at the Mall of America as part of the store’s “National Believe Day.” Macy’s and Make-A-Wish are granting extra wishes across the country to create a day of “Wishes Across America” for children who have life-threatening medical conditions.

Mary Divine is a reporter for the St. Paul Pioneer Press. She covers Washington County and the St. Croix River Valley, but has also spent time covering the state Capitol. She has won numerous journalism awards, including the Premack Award and the Minnesota Society of Professional Journalists' Page One Award. Prior to joining the Pioneer Press in 1998, she worked for the Rochester, Minn., Post-Bulletin and at the St. Joseph, Mo., News-Press. Her work has also appeared in a number of magazines, including Mpls/St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Business Monthly and Minnesota Magazine. She is a graduate of Carleton College and lives in St. Paul with her husband, Greg Myers, and their three children, Henry, 15, Frances, 13, and Fred, 10.

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